Introducing the PPC Bee Notification platform

There are notifications, and then there are notifications. Some are unsolicited or annoying, others more than needed and desired. Notifications are messages sent to users based on actions or events which occurred or will occur in a system. From now on, they’re a part of the PPC Bee app as well.

Your daily use of PPC Bee will become much easier because the application now proactively informs the client about critical errors, or warns them of any irregular behavior. Notifications accessible to all clients are labeled as “critical errors”. App users in the Enterprise mode can also receive advanced notifications in the form of a “warning of an irregular behavior”. While developing these types of notifications we drew on our experience from working with the most demanding clients who manage huge amounts of products and campaigns, work with many data feeds, run e-shops in several countries, or are specialists or agencies managing large numbers of clients. If that is you, then our notifications will definitely come in handy.

The goal of the Notification platform is to point out issues (even potential ones) which can be encountered by the clients while using the application. Problems can be posed by data sources, campaigns, etc. Errors can be recurring which is why they definitely should be resolved with a positive result. Let’s call these problems INCIDENTS. An incident contains information about the type of the issue and its status (open/closed), as well as the amount and intensity of its occurrence.

Incidents come in one of two categories — critical error and warning of an irregular behavior:

● The critical error category points out defects which make PPC Bee unable to function properly, and must be resolved as soon as possible (with the client).

● The warning category includes incidents which may create problems on the client’s part, though the application can keep functioning correctly.

The user is informed by email as soon as an incident is opened (occurs).Users can manage the notification setup directly in the application — you can tell us what you want to receive and what you don’t. Users can also check out the incident monitoring feature (incident overview). The setting gives users these options:

A CRITICAL ERROR-type incident

In case of a critical error, the user is notified that there’s a problem on their part, meaning that they need to become involved in order for the issue to be resolved.

1.Data source couldn’t be updated.

An incident of this type occurs in case a data source fails to be updated, meaning that the advertising system can’t receive up-to-date data. This can happen for several reasons:

● Server where the data source is stored responds with an error code (404/500, …);

● Feed has an invalid structure (invalid CSV/XML);

● Data structure and significance changed in the data source so that 0 products were loaded by PPC Bee — this can happen if the identifier or tag names in XML changed.

2.The advertising system is inaccessible

If some of the advertising systems (AdWords, Sklik, Bing) aren’t accessible, up-to-date data can’t be synchronized. This can happen if you changed your Sklik password or if your AdWords and Bing keys expired/were removed. In that case, you need to link the advertising system again. And that can’t be done without the client’s involvement.

A WARNING OF AN IRREGULAR BEHAVIOR-type incident

This notification is sent to clients if PPC Bee manages to synchronize and everything works just as it should, but the downloaded data source has

1. a smaller number of products than the previous one; or

2. it takes an unusual amount of time to download the data source

This incident may or may not mean that there’s an issue on the client’s part.

1.Data source contains fewer products after the update

For example, after the data source is successfully updated, the number of products it contains is decreased by 25%. This may be just what you intended, but it can also mean that an error occurred.

2.Data source takes an unusually long time to download

In the first stage of a data source update, we download data feed from the supplied URL. If the download takes an unusually long time, we create an incident which represents possible issues on the client’s servers, caused by e.g. an overload.

You can find a new Notifications tab among the other tabs in the overview of your organization.

If you’d like to receive more detailed information about our notifications, or if you have suggestions as to how the Notification platform could be further improved, as always let us know by sending an email to info@ppcbee.com.